Richard Dowling

“ How am I who am but a joke of nature to live with no spiritual food? My clock was my life, and my soul, and my fame, my immortal part and now--! Gone! gone! gone!"
"But how did you escape, Mr. Leigh? We saw you winding up after you left this, and you nodded to us as usual, when the easy part of the winding came, half-way through."
"I did. Curse my mandarin neck. If I had minded nothing but my clock it would be safe now, or I should be dead with it."
"But how did you escape, Mr. Leigh?"
"The devil takes care of his own, Mr. Hanbury," he said, speaking for the first time to the young man. ”

“ The gold-coloured dust fell from the dwarf's file like a thin, down-driven spirt of auriferous vapour.
"Miracle Gold," he thought, "Miracle Gold. All gold is Miracle Gold when one tests it by that only great reagent, the world. The world, the world. In my Miracle Gold there would be found an alloy of copper and silver. Yes, a sad and poisonous alloy. Copper is blood-red, and silver is virgin white, and gold is yellow, a colour between the two, and infinitely more precious than they, the most precious of all metals is gold. ”

“ Timmons took little or no notice of the other man beyond addressing him. He was in a state of wild excitement, not exactly of joy, but triumph. It was a hideous sight to see this lank, grizzled, repulsive-looking man capering around the store, and exulting in the news he had just read, of a man on whom he had fawned a day before. "He's dead! The dwarf is dead, Stamer!" he cried again. In his wild gyrations his hat had fallen off, disclosing a tall, narrow head, perfectly bald on the top. ”

“ Having settled this screen to his satisfaction, he left the room and descended once more.
"My clock," he thought, "will be enough for fame. I will not meddle with this Miracle Gold. I am committed to nothing, and anything Timmons may say will be only slander, even if he did dare to speak."
He reached the street, and wandered on aimlessly.
"My clock when it is finished will be the most perfect piece of mechanism ever designed and executed by one man. It will be classed among the wonders of the world, and be spoken of with admiration as long as civilization lasts. ”

“ Surely the ways of life would be very dusty and dreary if a man found his severest critics always closest to his side, if any deficiencies in the public indictment of his character or conduct were to be supplied by a voice from his own hearth, by his other self, by his wife?
John Hanbury had from his first thinking of Dora more than of any other girl he had met, looked on her as a possible wife. When he went further and made up his mind to ask her to marry him, he had regarded her as a future wife more than a present sweetheart. ”

“ Ay, ay, ay, the clock is gone, and the Miracle Gold, too. I am glad I never had anything really to do with it. I am sorry I was not always of the mind I was yesterday--my last day at my bench. All the time I was burying in my own grave my own small capital of life, I was missing the real gold of existence. I sought to build up fame in my clock and in that gold. Fame is for the dead. What are the dead to us? ”

“ Poor old woman. Well! well! But, Shaw, send to Chester Square for my friend, Mr. John Hanbury, the man who brought me here, you know. I want to see him alone, privately. He is the only person who knows all my affairs." There was a flicker of the old boasting spirit in the way he gave Hanbury's name and address, and spoke of him as his friend.
Hanbury came at once.
"I sent for you because I have something on my mind; and, as you are the only man who knows all the secret of Mystery Gold, and my deputy winder, I want you to do me a service. Will you?" ”

“ If Leigh gave up his miserable clock, Leigh and Williams might do something together. The two great forces of their minds might be directed to one common object and joined in one common fame.
"Partner! Hah!" cried Leigh sharply, "and have all my secrets blown upon in twenty-four hours." Then he added significantly. "The only man whom I would allow into that room for a minute should be deaf and dumb and a fool."
"And not able to read or write," added Williams with answering significance.
"And not able to read or write," said the dwarf, nodding his head to Williams. ”

“ It might occur to Dora to look at the likeness between herself and his cousin Edith in this way: To me John Hanbury is merely a young man of promising ability, who may if he likes forward causes in which I take a great interest. I sometimes cross him and thwart him, but then he is my lover, and, though I despise rank, I am his social superior in England now anyway. How would it be with him if this young girl whose appearance is so like mine cares' for him, apart from his abilities and possible usefulness in causes interesting to me, and sets great store by noble race and royal blood? ”

“ She sat silent and timid. She did not seem to hear quickly or to apprehend accurately. She had hesitated in her answers like one afraid. The table was small, and laid for four people. Hanbury sat opposite his mother, Edith opposite her grandmother. The heat was intense.
There was a buzzing and beating in the girl's ears. She heard as through a sound of plashing water. The talk of Leigh had carried her mind back to the country, back to Millway and Eltham House, and to the unexpected and unwelcome and disquieting apparition of the dwarf at the door of the house when she arrived there. ”

“ A chair was fetched by Binns the potman and Leigh was set upon it with his back to the window, so that his eyes might not look upon the grave of his labour.
"All gone! All gone! Nothing left! Nothing left! The work of seven years day and night! Day and night! Day and night! Gone, all gone!"
"But, Mr. Leigh," said the pale-faced Williams, in a low and very kindly voice, "it might have been ever so much worse."
"Worse! How could it be worse? There is nothing saved."
"Why, thank God, Mr. Leigh, you are saved. ”

“ He had yet to learn that in the mind of a murderer there is a gradually filling in and crowding together of the images of the undamned dead that in the end blind and block up the whole soul in stifling intimacies with the dead, until the murderer in his despair flings himself at the feet of the hangman shrieking for mercy, for mercy, for the mercy of violent and disgraceful death in order to put an end to the fiendish gibes of the dead who is not dead but living, who will not sink into hell, but brings hell into the assassin's brain. ”

“ I shall begin no other clock. The sands in my own hour-glass are running low already. When a man of my make endures a great shock and a great disappointment he does not endure much more. He dies. I am glad to meet you again. I am glad it was your arm kept me from falling. I want you to be my friend. I have no friend on earth excepting my poor mother, who is more helpless than I myself. I know what I am asking when I say I want you for my friend. I would not ask you to be my friend the day before yesterday. ”

“ He saw in the dwarf the agent, the ally of the police--the police, absolutely, in a more malignant form than the stalwart detective who, with handcuffs in his pockets, runs a man down. This Leigh was a traitor and a policeman together. It seemed as though it would be impossible for one human being to possess any characteristic which could add to the hatefulness of him who exhibited these two. And yet this Leigh was not only a traitor and a policeman combined, but an enemy of Timmons--a beast who threatened Timmons as well! Shooting was too merciful a death for such a miscreant. ”

“ Timmons had an opinion that the mere look of junk had a tendency to damp the professional ardour of men who had ever spent the days of their captivity in converting it into oakum.
On the ground floor of Timmons's premises there was no such thing as a chair. He looked on a chair in a marine store as a token of dangerous softening of manners. If a man allowed himself a chair in his place of business why not also a smoking-cap and slippers? ”

“ Is it not strange that you should have wanted a cab in this spot forty-eight hours ago, and I should want it here now?"
"It is strange," said Hanbury, "but the world is very small, and our absolute wants in it are very closely circumscribed." The manner of Leigh had changed in a marked manner since they emerged from the door of the Hanover. His steps had become slow and more dragged, his breathing more laboured, and he had lost all swagger and bounce, and self-assertiveness. ”

“ Poniatowski was no doubt an elected king, but so were the others, and he was a Lithuanian nobleman before he became King. The kingdom over which he ruled exists no longer except in history, and even if the infamous partitions had never taken place and Stanislaus had owned his English marriage and taken his English family with him, I should have no more claim to the throne than to that of the Queen. But I am the lineal descendant of a king who reigned for a generation, and neither the malignity of to-day nor the lies of history can destroy that fact. ”

“ Leigh gave a sigh of pain and stopped. "I am done," he said. "I can go no further. I shall walk no more."
"Nonsense, you will be all right again. Here is a cab at last, thank goodness!"
"You will come with me. You will not desert me. My confession is over. I shall speak of this matter no more to any man. It was only a temptation, and I absolutely did no wrong. You will not desert me. I am very feeble. I do not know what the matter is with me. I have no strength in my body. I never had much, but the little I had is gone. You will not desert me, Mr. Hanbury. ”

“ I don't know what came over me, but I was carried quite beyond myself and said things no gentleman, no man, ought to say to any girl----"
"John, I don't believe you--you are under some strange and miserable hallucination. You said something to Dora Ashton that no man ought to say to any girl! Impossible! Thank God, I know my son better than to believe anything of the kind," said Mrs. Hanbury, beginning in a manner of incredulity and ending in firm conviction. ”

“ Day followed day in Chester Square, bringing slowly, almost imperceptibly, health and strength back to the exquisite form of Edith Grace. The spirituality lent by illness still more refined the delicate beauty of the girl, and when the colour came back to the lips, and the cheeks lost their pallor she seemed more like a being new-born of heaven to earth than a mortal of our homely race. ”

“ I have not had my good-morrow kiss, sir."
"I never had anything so important on my mind, or on my lips, Edy, as your kiss, dear." He took her in his arms and kissed her fondly.
"You grow better at compliments as the days go by."
"No dear, deeper in love."
"With such a commonplace kind of thing as a wife?"
"With the most un-commonplace sweetheart--wife in all the world."
"John, I am already beginning to feel quite a middle-aged wife, and my ring where it touches the guard is getting worn." ”

“ It's you deserve the broken neck; and as sure as you're alive, Tom Stamer, you'll get it, get it from Jack Ketch, before long, and you deserve it."
"Deserve it for missing Leigh?" cried Stamer, in a tone of dismay. Nothing could satisfy Timmons this morning. First he was furious because he had killed Leigh, and now he was savage because the bullet had missed him!
"No, you red-handed botch! Worse than even if you killed Leigh, who hasn't been all straight. But you have killed an innocent man. A man you never saw or heard of in all your life until last night. ”

“ If you employ your brain and your hands it will very soon be all over with you. Still, he held that the appearance of indulgence or luxury was most unbecoming in any place of business, and particularly in a marine store, where transactions were concerned with so stern and stubborn things as junk and old metal. He dealt in junk, but out of regard for the feelings of gentlemen who might have had bitter and long acquaintance with it while adorning another sphere, Timmons kept the junk away from sight in the cellar, to which mere callers were never admitted. ”

“ What infernal stuff did the dwarf give Stamer to smell? It was a mercy it did not kill the man. If it had killed Stamer, and there had been an inquest, it would have made a nice mess. No one could tell what might have come out about Stamer, about the whole lot, about myself!
"It is plain no one ought to have further dealings with that little man. Anyone who could give stuff like that to a man to smell in broad daylight, and in the presence of witnesses, would not stick at a trifle in the dark and when no one was by. ”

“ I was at the Hanover last night just before twelve, and I did go into Forbes's bakery as you say. But I swear to you I left London last night by the twelve-fifteen, and I swear to you I did not wind up my clock last night. It was this morning between four and five o'clock I found out in Birmingham that the man was not to be trusted. You will wonder where I made inquiries at such an hour."
"I do, indeed," said Timmons scornfully.
"I told you, and I think you know, that I am not an ordinary man. My powers, both in my art and among men, are great and exceptional. ”